Pisgah Monster Cross was last weekend. It's the third year for the race and my second year of doing it. I'm hesitant to admit to racing it. Despite riding far past the brink of sanity and normal exhaustion, I'd rather feign nonchalance about the whole affair because of my totally average results. I'd rather have you believe I spent my time on the Blue Ridge Parkway taking in the scenery, riding like this person:

Yes, I was just going for a nice ride and I just happened to finish only an hour behind the godless heathens who blaspheme Nature's grandeur by, ugh, trying to win. I could say that I rode like a happy-go-lucky tourist but it would be a lie. I've been on the parkway before, and I know it's beautiful. But I can't tell you much about what it looked like on Saturday. I remember fog and hills. This after 20 or 30 miles of uphill gravel struggle and downhill gravel struggle. Downhill gravel isn't easy for me because I'm a gutless descender and I can't relax. It doesn't help that I crashed on these roads last year and broke a rib. So, while the Monster Cross Challenge may look like this:

And this:

My experience was more like this:

Important bike-dork data for people who like that sort of thing and may be looking for new ways to flush money down the toilet:Aluminum Cyclocross frame made in Southeast Asia like every frame from every manufacturer: In this case it's a Blue Norcross SP. I bought this from an online store for a great price. As much as I'd like a snazzier boutique steel frame, this bike has served me so well that I can't justify a new bike. Yet. Wheels and Tires: Velocity A23s with a WTB Nano 40 on the front and an MSO Explorer 40 on the rear. PSI ~40 and ~45 respectively. I also use tubes. I've never ridden tubeless. But I've never had problems with flats and I am afraid to try new things. Pedals: Yes.Bike Computer: This was my first test of my brand new Garmin Edge Touring GPS thingy. I downloaded what I thought was the proper map so I could have some idea of how much time I had to suffer. I hit start at the start and after a few feet realized that I had the previous year's map loaded. This is important because the course is run in different directions each year. So every time during my misery uphill my Garmin was exhorting me to "Make a U-turn as soon as possible." Also about 55 miles in the computer inexplicably powered off. Not impressed, Garmin.

The New Garmin Edge Touring GPS Cyclocomputer

Overall experience: Though rain was promised, it held off until my last few miles on pavement. I started with no warm up, immediately went up the rocky climb for miles, past the scene of last year's crash, then down the rocky descent, up and down gravel roads by babbling brooks and rushing streams, and campers waking to the gorgeous morning. All the time my legs were cramping and I absolutely could not believe that my brakes were not maladjusted and stuck against my rims, which would account for how goddamn slow I felt. Oh yeah, my friend Roger was with me. He crashed in a well-marked rut on a descent. His bike survived and he had some bleeding, but nothing serious. Fortunately he was in front of me. Otherwise I would have certainly crashed in his place. Long gravel ascent to the parkway, where the most godawful climb commenced. Hours it seemed, and I desperately wanted to heed my Garmin's U-turn advice. Roger caught me midway and we rode to a food stop. I reloaded on PBJs and potato chips while Roger went ahead. Hours passed and I almost caught Roger at the top of a climb. But to our right was tourist facility. I seized the opportunity to shed some weight in the bathroom that had been bothering me for the last hour or so. So yeah, I'm a Florida flatlander going up the biggest hill ever AND I've got to take a shit. That happened. Back on the road, maybe 1/2mph faster. Get off the parkway onto one of the longest, fastest descents I've ever ridden. It's a good thing I made a pit stop earlier because this road was shit-your-pants fast. Another food stop, this one with quesadillas. (The volunteers at this race were great. You didn't even have to stop. At one I just tossed them my empty bottles and they handed me new ones filled with colored sugar water as I slowly pedaled by.) More gravel roads, short but hurty climbs. It started raining when I hit the final paved stretch. I was rejuvenated. I TT'd all the way home and managed to pass some of the mountain bikers who made me feel like a pansy on the tricky downhills. I will certainly do this race again. As a bonus the new Oskar Blues Brewery is only two miles from the park entrance. You should go there. They had a cask-conditioned imperial red with ginger and lime that I recommend. The brewery is a shrine to beer and bike love. Here is your author at the bottom of the steps leading to the tap room.

Thumbs up for Pisgah Monster Cross 2014. Do it in 2015, if only to ride downhill the whole time you're on the parkway.

Just because I never talk about ninjas doesn't mean I'm not thinking about climbing up a wall to throw a star into some asshole's forehead. Being a ninja as depicted in '80s movies like Revenge of the Ninja and Pray for Death would be the coolest thing possible. I added Ninja II to my Netflix queue when I saw it had an actor with the last name Kosugi.Sho Kosugi needs no introduction. This movie has Kane Kosugi. Must be his son.*Here's a trailer.

Maybe this doesn't look so great to you. Maybe you can't imagine watching something without Benedict Cumberbatch or a Peter Gabriel song. Maybe your ideal leading man is Michael Cera. But me, well, I'm a guy who likes movies.And I like Ninja II. I watched my first ninja movie when I was around 8 years old. If at 8 years old someone had given me a film crew and some karate-ically but not dramatically talented people this is the movie I would have made.But I was thinking. If there were ninjas today, they would probably use guns with silencers. The guy in this movie won't even touch guns. When he kills a squad of thugs in the Burmese jungle he leaves behind their AK-47s. But he takes their grenades. He'll blow shit up, but shooting people is out of the question? Ninjas would totally use guns.This movie: You already know if you'll like or not.

Design and marketing are crucial to the beer business. There are many beers I'm sure taste great that I have never bought. I've heard good things about Hoppin' Frog, but their labels are retarded. They look like novelty beers you'd by at a state border tourist trap. We know the beer industry is full of shit. The big brewers have spent billions on titties, comedians and Carlos Santana guitar solos to sway us to drink their version of pale, fizzy fluid instead of the other one that tastes exactly the same.But these days there are millions of people like me who are always searching for ways to spend more on beer without increasing the amount consumed. The beer from the guys the big guys is too cheap! So I walk into my local expensive beer store and look around. Already I can feel my debit card warming my right buttcheek. I see Belgian ales aged in Madeira barrels, sour beers brewed in Texas, Japanese beers aged in Scotch barrels. I check my bank balance on my phone and see that my paycheck was freshly direct deposited. Mmmm, I can't wait to wipe that fucker out. But what should I get? Who's the sexy beer that gets to go home with Mr. Money?A row of stubby BFM bottles caught my eye. $8 for 11.2 ounces? Now you're talking. Let me look at you closer. BFM: Brasserie something or other. 10.3% is a very sexy ABV. But wait. I'm not all about the alcohol. Otherwise I would just go buy some cheap hooch. See, I went to college. You have to appeal to my mind if you want me to drink you. And I like what I see. The red star appeals to the socialist indoctrination I received from my hippie professors. And BFM is like KGB, SLA and FARC. Yeah, man. If this beer could smoke and wear a hat it would smoke black cigarettes and wear a beret. BFM, you're coming with me.

When I get home I put BFM in the freezer. I eat some cheese and crackers. I get on the internet. I try to distract myself from the beer. I want to drink it so bad, but it's not cool yet. I try to forget about by reading the first issue of Preacher. That comic kicks ass. I forgot how awesome the Saint of Killers is. Bad ass. But I can't stop thinking about it. Just a little longer. Oh, I know what will help me forget. I open a private browser window. A little while later I go wash my hands and check the beer. It's ready. Let me get my expensive beer glass. This is what it looked like:

I smell it and sip it and swish it. It's pretty normal for $8 beers. Part sweet, part weird. The weirdness is key. That means you've got a challenging beer. People Who Know don't want easy beers. BFM even thought to include a warning for the weak:

If the label design wasn't so expertly done, I would be inclined to think BFM didn't know what they were doing. But since they included this warning I have to assume they intended their beer to taste like a handful of pennies.

Here's the video for the song "Goodbye Gemini" from throwback occult rockers Blood Ceremony.

In this video Blood Ceremony hits everything I like about late '60s early '70s occult rock. Everything. That's the problem. Rather than be inspired by bands like Black Widow and Coven, they're trying to actually be the greatest occult band from 1969. I like it, but the remake is never as good as the original.These are less religious times we live in. Occult and Satanic paraphernalia are stylish these days. Pretty, well-bred girls and boys can sport a Goat of Mendes tattoo and not arouse suspicion while working at a daycare.

(Actually that's pretty cool.)

I like the pentagrams, and amulets and all the other Occult accoutrements. I'm especially fond of the era that Blood Ceremony worships. There was a too-brief explosion of awesome music and writing. But artists should take inspiration from those "Eldritch" bands and writers, not mimic them. Satanism and the Occult are safe choices today because nobody really believes in that shit anymore. What bands are pushing the boundaries these days? I'm not sure. They're necessarily going to be obscure. And what are the boundaries anyway? What's considered evil changes.

Christian Nation by Frederic Rich was released this summer. The premise is that in 2008 McCain/Palin won the presidency. McCain dies during the first year. Things go from bad to worse.

First my complaints. The characters are flat, just clumsy tools to get Rich’s point across. The female characters are less than flat. To use a geometry metaphor, they are mere lines to the two-dimensional male planes. Another cringe inducer is the exaltation of Mayor Bloomberg as a secular saint. The dialogue is what I would expect in a “purpose-driven” novel. Despite my sympathy with Rich’s perspective, it’s impossible to avoid comparisons with Ayn Rand’s novels, The Turner Diaries and I presume The Left Behind series and Glenn Beck’s novels–books that value the readers’ instruction over their entertainment. Rich wants to inspire action, not deepen the human experience. But I knew that going in. Just glancing at the cover tells you this is a polemic in a novel’s clothing.

But for all this, Christian Nation doesn’t deserve to be dumped in the didactic dustbin with the aforementioned and their ilk. Polemic novels can be great. Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here, which is Christian Nation’s inspiration, is a great novel.

Lewis’s novel allows you to see the fascism and brutality lying just beneath the surface in your friends and neighbors. Given the right political climate people you know and get along with can become your torturers. Lewis conveyed the humiliation and dismay of having the dumb thugs in your town become your bosses and executioners. The Enlightenment values enshrined in the Constitution are unnatural and fragile. They need vigorous protection.

Christian Nation extrapolates from what is already known about the Christian Right in America. Rich provides numerous quotes from the movement’s leaders that explicitly call for the theocracy in the novel. Those who insist the U.S. is a Christian nation and seek to install the Bible as the law of the land cannot compromise. There are tens of millions who seek to make every American submit to their interpretation of biblical law. And they’ve been working for decades to achieve this goal.

One aim is to have theocrats occupy elite positions of power. There are political wings of the movement, as shown in Jeff Sharlet’s The Family. They are also active in our military academies, as the scandal at the Air Force Academy has shown. We have retired General Boykin. While serving as Under Secretary of Defense during the Bush administration, Boykin made news for comments that showed his theocratic understanding of the War on Terror and the U.S.’s role as God’s favorite country. Now he is vice president of the Family Research Council.

There is also the homeschooling movement. Fears of evolution, homosexual indoctrination, birth control and other anathema, millions of Christians choose to educate their children at home within the theocratic bubble. They form support groups, purchase textbooks and succeed in raising a generation of children who can become adults without ever having to encounter a single person who thinks the ideas that people coexisted with dinosaurs six thousand years ago and that abortion causes breast cancer are absurd. Here’s Jerry Falwell on the subject:

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them."

The theocrats have millions on their side. They take a long-term approach to power, and they are able to work as a cohesive unit. As Rich writes, revolutions typically begin with a dedicated minority. The theocrats have made great progress and have already amassed great wealth and power. They have friends in industry and on the Supreme Court. 2008, the pivotal year in Rich’s novel was important because of the likely SCOTUS vacancy that would arise. As civil rights lawyer Eddie Tabash said that year, we are one Supreme Court justice away from theocracy. They made a lot of progress under the Bush administration with restrictions on stem cell research and Faith-based initiatives. And they’re always trying to funnel public money into supporting private Christian schools. A Sarah Palin presidency would open the floodgates for theocratic legislation and ensure a theocratic SCOTUS majority. Add a little more conceivable bad luck and we could live under the crushing rule of Christian Nation.

A witch hunter anointing Sarah Palin.

The book gets a little boring in the second half, even as the action heats up. Rich, who is a corporate lawyer, takes too much care to elucidate the legal challenges to the new theocracy. And the final battles take place without much emotion, since a) the conclusion is known and b) the drama isn’t in the story, but in the portrayal of the real life threat we face. And I really wish he hadn’t used Bloomberg. Christian Nation is a rallying call to defend our values, our American values that are under attack. There is a force that claims to be TRUE AMERICAN, but they have no respect for the Constitution or the liberal values enshrined in it. Most certainly it can happen here. I hope it’s unlikely. But in the great mass of Americans there is the capacity for great cruelty.

This is the beer that I'm drinking as I write this and the one that inspired this post.

Year after year this beer is always delicious. I go through beer phases. Sometimes I can't get enough hops, sometimes all I want to chug is wheat beers. But it's always the right time for a Rare Vos. It's not too strong, it's not too anything. It's the Goldilocks beer. But it is distinctive too.

The perfect beer?

Cigar City Jai Alai

There are a lot of great IPAs. They all emphasize different aspects of hops. There's a very complicated balancing act in an IPA's creation. Hop resin bitterness has to be balanced by malt, and too much of either crowd out the hop oil's flavor.

Jai Alai focuses more on the hop's delicate flavors than, say, some West Coast IPAs like Sierra Nevada. But no question it's an IPA, it's just less skewed to the punch-you-in-the-face end of the spectrum.

Green Flash Palate Wrecker

This beer is the un-Jai Alai.Just a shitload of hops, a high ABV, and an awesome, awesome taste.

It's amazing that a beer has this ridiculous amount of hops, and it's not overkill. Truly astounding. But after a pint I'm done with it for the night.

OK, maybe two pints.

Orval

Another classic. There's nothing else like it. Sometimes I go into a beer store and find a bottle that's a year or two old. This is a good thing. The Brux has had time to dry it out.

A place near my home includes Orval in their low-priced happy hour. $3 for an Orval is a beautiful thing.There's no reason for these monks to make another beer.

North Coast Brewery Old Rasputin

Another beer that could be had at stupidly low happy hour place. Old Rasputin will knock you on your ass, but you won't mind.

Big, bad-ass stouts abound, but Rasputin is my favorite.

*As I near the end of my Rare Vos I'm losing my interest in details.

Gouden CarolusClassic

Any Gouden Carolus beer could be on this list. They have a distinctively flavored yeast strain that's delicious in all their beers.

Rodenbach Grand Cru

In the U.S. Flanders reds are mainly drunk by beer dorks. Normal people are turned off by the sweet and sour flavor and the fleshy smell. Flanders reds are unlike anything most people associate with beer.

But when you get past the initial shock Rodenbach is fucking delicious.

Terrapin Monk's Revenge

The Belgian IPA is one of my favorite beer categories. It's basically a tripel with more hops. Monk's Revenge is one of the first that I found widely available that was also great.Other greats are Green Flash Le Freak, La Chouffe Houblon, and Gouden Carolus Hopsinjoor.

Paulaner Hefe-Weizen

My personal favorite of the big German hefe-weizens. Once the temperatures rise I never fail to crave these after a bicycle ride.

Franziskaner's great too, and there are others. But I'm not a fan of Tucher.

Well, that's it for now. I need to eat something. I'm getting loopy.This list is subject to change at any moment. Later.

This little book, Hitchens's last, is too brief. I completed it in one sitting with a single glass of porter. I imagine it was painful for him to write this. At the time of its writing he had lost his voice and much of his dexterity. Perhaps the terseness here can be attributed to the words having had the time to concentrate in his mind before their release.

The book is a collection of several essays from Tumortown, a land where he went to live after his diagnosis of esophageal cancer. He proposes a handbook for communication between denizens of the healthy world and those of Tumortown. For the healthy, it would have suggestions on topics to avoid, and advice on how to be neither too rosy nor too blunt. As an example of rosiness he imagines hearing of someone's grandmother who "was diagnosed with terminal melanoma of the G-Spot. But she hung in there and last year she climbed Mt. Everest."

The book is often sad, mostly because of his characteristic relentless honesty in laying out the facts, but there's never enough time to dwell on the morbid content. He never lingers on anything sympathy-inducing before he sets off ridiculing some stupidity, like Fundamentalists on YouTube betting whether he'll experience a deathbed conversion.

To this he says, "If I convert it's because it's better that a believer dies than that an atheist does."

He goes on to deride intercessory prayer, even those made by friends for his benefit: "A different secular problem also occurs to me: What if I pulled through and the pious faction contendtedly claimed that their prayers had been answered? That would somehow be irritating."

There is no grand insight in this book. Just his wit and humanity. He did what he was best at until he couldn't.

I'll end this with my favorite part of the book, an etiquette suggestion for those from Tumortown: advice on how not to behave. His example is Randy Pausch, the star of the viral video "The Last Lecture." This video was seen by millions and has as many devotees who attest to its profound, life-affirming qualities.

It should bear its own health warning: so sugary that you may need an insulin shot to withstand it. Pausch used to work for Disney and it shows .... Of course, you don't have to read Pausch's book, but many students and colleagues did have to attend the lecture, at which Pausch did push-ups, showed home videos, mugged for the camera, and generally joshed his head off. It ought to be an offense to be excruciating and unfunny in circumstances where your audience is almost morally obliged to enthuse.

This article in Slate is interesting but too short, and it raises many questions. That the lives of unsuccessful suicides become financially better after the attempt is interesting. They are often forced into psychiatric treatment that may have been unavailable to them before. It's worth considering how mental illness is a drain on society, since you have all these people (more suicides than murders and 20 times more attempted suicides than successful ones) living pained, disorganized lives. From a rational economic view, this may be a good case for more funding of public mental health.

Also, the Suicide Prevention movement has spent the last decades advocating that suicide must never be considered rational.

Constructing suicide as a momentary loss of reason is vitally important to the suicide-prevention movement because it suggests that men and women who have attempted self-murder should be allowed to shrug off social stigmas. If suicidal instincts are just momentary delusions, they are easily explained and dismissed. The suicide-prevention movement fears that if suicide is deemed the rational product of someone's mind, we may feel justified in suspecting that mind forever.

I understand why we would want to prevent people from being handicapped by a social stigma. Yet, it's obvious that suicide can be a rational decision. It's certainly not, as G.K. Chesterton said, "the ultimate and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest in existence." I love Chesterton, but this is one of those times when his innate intelligence is warped by his Catholicism.

Interest in existence has its limits. Sometimes it's not worth the trouble. A rational view of death and suicide acknowledges that life ends sooner or later, and that some ends are preferable to others. However, many Americans seem to think life must be extended at all costs, and that death is something we succumb to after everything has been tried. This is stupid and causes unnecessary suffering.

Yesterday I read this essay by William Blake, a man who has been held in solitary confinement for 26 years for the murder of a police officer. It's beautifully written, but heartbreaking. There are two types of people who could read this and not be persuaded this type of treatment should be abolished. First, the people close to the victim. They may not be able to forgive the murderer. That's understandable. I could see grief making me wish someone burned in hell forever and, like Blake says, to think the fire wasn't hot enough. I feel sorry for people like this. The other type is the person with abstract convictions that override any residual humanitarian feelings. People like the judge who sentenced Blake, who said, "You deserve an eternity in hell." These people are dangerous and should never hold any position related to public service.

I read this headline from the L.A. Times and thought, That's a cruel joke on the pessimists. Those who think life is rotten will get the most of it. But the use of the word is misleading. Pessimism here means cautious, or wearily conservative, like the defunct stereotype of a banker. They don't mean philosophical pessimism, which views the universe as a malignant turd. I'd like to see a study on that.